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Cell Phones - Analog vs. Digital
"The point of digital is that it takes alot less power to transmit and if you've got 1 bar or 5, the signal should sound the same.. and there in lies the problem.. with the should. With an analog phone as your signal strength begins to go below 1 bar you start to hear static but you can still understand the person your talking to, though you may need to 'yell over the static'. However, with a digital system when the signal fades, there's no yelling because the signal isn't there, and packets that should be getting to your phone, just get dropped. As a result, Aunt Martha's 'Hello' on a crummy analog connection can still be made out.. but on a digital connection of the same strength might sound like 'He...o' with a gap of silence in the middle. (See my Cell-Phone Switch parody commercial on this site for an example if you don't know what I'm talking about).
Cell phone companies are boasting about how digital is good, but is it really? Analog signals work on the 900MHz band, which goes very well through houses, trees, your neighbors dog, etc. Analog works on the 1.9GHz frequency, which does not go through houses, walls, metal, trees, well at all. The question now becomes, why are they moving to 1.9GHz? The signal length is smaller, and therefore antenas on the phones can be smaller without worrying about chopping the signal from it's full height. However, the cell phone companies need to cover the area better for there to be as much coverage, especially in the city where there is lots of Multi-path (bounces and signal inversions), and buildings to go through. This is the same reason that your 900MHz portable (land line) phone will go further then your 1.2GHz portable phone.. (or it should anyway, but alot of companies are making illegal 1.2GHz phones and putting them on the market).
In addition, back to Aunt Martha, as long as her 'Hello' usually sounds like her 'Hello' on a land line, what difference does it make right? Well, unfortunately, the digital standards we have today are from years past. And while they work, they are by no means clear. If you are looking for clarity, you'll want to stick with an analog phone. For data communications, digital is the way to go. Cell phone companies will tell you that if you're in analog you won't get your voice mail notification and such, but the truth is they COULD do it if they wanted to. They just want you to switch over to digital. Why? For one, it takes less bandwidth off of their access points, so they can get more subscribers on per access point. Each analog cell antenna can carry only 56 simultaneous phone conversations, which just doesn't cut it in heavily populated areas. With digital they compress the signal and as a result can get many more people on a sectoral antenna. Digital cell phones use extreme compression of the sound that they transmit. The compression algorithms used are lossy; they're specifically designed around transmission of human voice to human ears, and take advantage of what the human ear will tolerate and what it won't.
What about the pros for digital? Digital is a bit more secure then analog as you can't hear it just by setting a scanner to the correct frequency, you also have to un-encode it from the digital, and smooth the signal out.
On last thing, the digital system works on 1.9GHz... your home microwave works on 2.4GHz.. It's close enough, you still want to hold that phone next to your head? Remeber what happens to an egg when you put it in the microwave, and then decide.
So with all that said, which do I prefer? I prefer the analog since it has better coverage, and the analog phone will keep the connection better in fringe areas. Digital phones are an all or nothing proposition. They either work or they won't. Analog phones can swish and cut out, without dropping the call. What do Slashdot readers use and like and why?"
In a few years, the analog networks will be completely gone. Hell, a good number of phones sold today do not support analog.
Get off the phone and DRIVE!
For all its good points, what's the point of analog if I can't use my phone because the battery is dead?
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
Yeah, I realize that microwaves are 2.4 ghz, etc. Cell phones are 1.9, yes. However, if there is proof that cell phones cause cancer, or some other awful problem - we haven't seen it yet. Does your head warm up when you're on the phone? Yes. Does it harm you? Don't know, and we might not know for some time.
Just in case you missed this excellent post by Hemos last evening here it is again: Posted by Hemos. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/08/213625 4&mode=thread&tid=98 It's "a good article that describes how we, the consumers, can play the role of competitors to the vendors of products and services we buy. The author draws a parallel between FedEx's ZapMail failure and current situation with VoIP and WiFi in regard to the phone companies." I agree with the article. The jist is: you don't see anyone replacing digital phones with analog. Instead we are buying WI-Fi and 802.11 etc. and using VOIP to ease the use/spread of our digital materials. If we all buy enough of these network enhancers we just might be able to do away with outragous telephone bills from the Baby Bells.
..I much prefer analog. You need tome rather fancy equipment to eavesdrop on digital cellphones, but I can listen in on analog cellphones using just a very old Motorola and a small strip of tinfoil.
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
But it seems there's something missing from the standards... like that. :-)
Why is it that these networks don't simply break the bits per byte of sound up? IE: For every 8 samples of sound (assuming it's 8-bit sound), the bits are interleaved. This way if a byte is missing, the sound is still present, but at a lower quality.
Is there some technical reason this isn't done that I'm missing? I'd much rather my phone go from 8-bit sound quality, to 7-bit, to 6-bit, etc, etc, rather than just dropping out altogether.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
On the frequency point... Digital cell phones use (at least GSM phones do, don't know the CDMA frequencies) both 900 MHz bands and 1.8 GHz bands (1.9 GHz in the US, because the 1.8 GHz band is reserved for .mil use in the US). It depends on what the base stations in the area are using.
In general, digital signals can get through a much worse signal-to-noise ratio (after all, all you have to pick up is a 0 or 1), and should therefore be more robust than analog, especially with basic error correction thrown in. You'd need to compare the transmission/reception power levels to see if the digital phone is really doing worse. If the digital base station is transmitting at X watts, and the analog base station is transmitting at 3X watts, yeah, the analog might come through better.
Of course, better battery life isn't a bad thing either...
If your analog phones signal drops below maybe -3- bars out of 5, you're gonna get static. If you have 1 bar or less of signal on an analog phone, no amount of screaming is going to help you. I can make a crystal clear digital call, on Verizon's network usually with 1 bar or more. I get a bit of dropping on 0 bars, but whenever the signal is THAT low, it should switch to analog ALREADY.
NOT all Digital systems operate at 1.9GHz either - Verizon's network is mostly 800MHz. (Also incorrect when he states that AMPS [analog] operates on 900MHz, it is in the 800 band) Digital phones are at -variable- power, anywhere up to 300mw. Analog phones run at 600mw for handhelds, and 3W for the larger mounted and bag phones.
Granted, with a 3W transmitter, I'd take call quality from an analog phone any day, but unless you're in a really crappy area, a digital handheld should outperform any analog handheld. At least, a good digital handheld.
Plus, any good digital handheld should also be a good analog handheld if it needs to be.
The Analog network will be going away in a few years, except for areas where there is NO digital coverage.
Use high quality phones. Verizon and AT&T have decent quality control for their phones, and strict standards as to what they will approve to be used on their network [i'd be willing to be Verizon is a bit higher than AT&T, since they don't have 8 million different handsets available]. T-Mobile, Sprint and Cingular's QC for phones is considerably inferior, though I have no personal experience with AT&T, T-Mobile, or Cingular's inner workings. I can't speak for Nextel at all, but I don't know anyone who personally wants to carry a phone as big and heavy as the analog ones from 5 years ago on their hips just to have neat walkie talkie functions.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
The microwave comparison is bunk. First, microwave frequencies are chosen to be those best absorbed by food (ie. resonant with molecules such as H2O). Second, the power level of your phone is, at max output, a bit over a watt. The microwave is 600 to 1000 watts beamed into an enclosed space. It's like saying that you shouldn't play with a nerf launcher because getting hit with a rocket-propelled grenade is dangerous.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
... perhaps that answers your question.
Seriously, guys, get with the rest of the world. Even if it's just this one thing. In Europe GSM phones use either 900MHz or 1800MHz - why are you trying to push 1900MHz? Just use one of the normal frequencies.
US mobile phone networks seem really limited - if you go outside a given area, you might have coverage, but it's more likely you'll have to pay a fortune for it. In Europe, I can leave the UK and travel to damn near any other European country, and use the same phone. If I'm in Romania, my phone works just the same as it would in Scotland. Local calls cost about the same, international calls cost about the same. If you want to phone me, in Romania, dial the international dialling code for Romania then my mobile number. Simple as that.
Just use GSM, and get it the same as the rest of the world.
Just trying to say analog vs. digital misses the fact that there are several types of digital - the most common in the US being CDMA and TDMA. I have no scientific surveys but it seems that my friends on CDMA systems are much less happy than those with TDMA.
It's true that quality vs. signal strength on analog is, well, analog. It gets worse and worse as the strength goes down. On digital it's digital. Once you reach a certain threshold you are suddenly screwed. I have had times where I could converse, however poorly, on analog when I could not at all on digital (just select analog only on the phone's menu in those cases).
Overall, I think the quality committment of the company (enough capacity, well-placed sites, proper maintenance, etc.) is a much bigger factor than analog or digital.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Stick with analog. The human ear cannot hear digital, only analog, so there isnt much better quality unless you have super ears.
http://phreakinb.com
They will take my analog network from me when they pry my dixie cups and kite string from my cold, dead hands.
With an analog phone...you may need to 'yell over the static'
As someone who's heard way to many insensative a#%holes have conversations in movie theaters, restaurants and the like, the fact that you can't 'shout over the static' with digital is a feature, not a drawback.
I've had a Digital phone for several years. The first would switch between digital and analog, the second is GSM, so digital only.
You know what? It rocks. I've never had significant issues with it except at a client site that is not served well. (The 'local' tower is not local and the buildings in the town where the client resides are sufficient to block the signal entirly. This was a screwup on the part of the cellular company.
Anybody that bitches about the sound quality on digital should either find a new provider, or get their hearing checked. I've never had to yell into my phone, and, with the odd bit of noise I've only occasionaly had to ask people to repeat themselves. (and that is because I wasn't paying attention
I was using a TDMA Startac, but have since switched to a Nokia 8390 GSM phone. Works great and the coverage is similar or identical to my TDMA. I also notice that less people yell into their phones these days...
Look here to find out: http://www.cnet.com/wireless/0-5939521.html I'll bet it's a lot less than your microwave. In addition, a microwave is a specially designed metal box that does it's best to make sure all that power gets into the food, your cell phone has at least a 180 degrees that isn't pointed at your head.
Digital signals are better, it helps to relieve congestion on the airways, it reduces the power of signals needed and increases battery life. Plus it's a hell of a lot easier to get IP working over it. (IP does dropped packets a lot better than garbled packets).
If radiation is really your concern. Get a head set. Bluetooth might not be the best idea. :)
I don't know what the point of this article is. It is re-iterating (in some cases exaggerating) stuff we already knew. The rest of the world had this discussion at least 10 years ago. As a result, we standardized on GSM.
In Australia we discouraged the use of Analog phones in the mid 90s, and the analog networks were shutdown in 99.
Before this time GSM was gaining huge momentum, with three GSM networks rapidly expanding their coverage. The majority of the urban population were pleased with the technology, however the rural population were less than amused. As a result, CDMA technology was deployed by Telstra which is a digital system, but offering performance characteristics closer to analog.
One problem with GSM in rural areas is the timing advance issue, which limits the maximum range of dedicated mode (2-way communication) to about 35km, typically. The GSM range limitation is not, contrary to popular belief, a power output limitation.
I'm getting a little offtopic here, but I'll quickly explain the problem: The timing advance problem is a result of using fine-grained timeslots. The timing advance parameter is the number of symbol periods the MS (phone) must advance the transmission to avoid colliding with other timeslots. The maximum value is 63 symbol periods, which was chosen to allow the MS plenty of time to measure other cells when not transmitting and receiving.
Additionally, GSM offers Short-Messaging-Service, GPRS (packet switched data), far more efficient spectrum use, EDGE (high speed GPRS using 8PSK modulation).
The population and population density of the US is far better for deploying GSM networks than Australia, so if Australia can do it, I can't see why the US can't.
1.8Ghz is reserved for military use. Kinda like 2.4Ghz is in France (last I checked, at least. might have changed it due to 802.11b's popularity). Which is cheaper: having new cell phones use a slightly different frequency (not a problem for the 99% of US phones that never leave the US), or re-adjusting every last bit of military hardware with a radio in it (yeah, lets raise taxes and/or cut government programs to pay for potentially tens of thousands of equipment repairs/replacements, just so a few bums can use their phone in Europe)?
I just recently bought a Seimens S something or other and it SUCKS! I have never had worse quality from any phone. The phone retails for $250, good thing I didn't pay that much. The internet features never work, every person I talk to says that I am cutting out, and the signal is absolute trash; it will shut off when I answer, when I am in the house, in the car. I have to stand outside to make a friggin call. If you are in the Chapel Hill, NC area go for analog or stay away from Cingular. I have never had a digital phone that worked past 10 feet of the inside of a building. My analog had no such problem. Is this a problem with my provider or are the digital networks just not up to par yet?
You can get digital phones in all brands - 900MHz, 1800MHz and 1900MHz, so the microwave-point (which, is also not valid because of the _very_ low power emitted) and the longer signal are not valid.
The soundquality is also overall better in a digital network.
And besides, if you want to do something geeky, you'll definetly need a digital signal to transmit data. =P
One digital phone I'm really satisfied is Nextel, which uses the IDEN protocol. It's basically the same as TDMA, with the 2-way radio feature added in. With the 2way radio, you have a number of benefits -- much cheaper (they are billed out at 1/10 second intervals), and you don't get tied up in a long conversation with someone when you just need a bit of info. That is, since communication with the radio feature is half duplex, the person your conversing with will tend to give you the facts quickly, then release the key in order to get the reply. Whereas, if you call someone, it tends to turn into a long useless conversation. Therefore, it's about as efficient as doing SMS messages.
Sprint used to have a pretty big campaign advertising "Digital Clarity", but that's bullshit. The tests I've done say that analog sounds better. This doesn't mean it IS better, however. Digital networks are way cheaper to set up and run. Which, believe it or not, they do pass the savings on to you. This is why Sprint can offer what ammounts to $0.10 a minute peak and infinite offpeak usage (and tmobile is even cheaper).
As for me, I'm content with the sound quality of my digital phone (unless my reception is bad, people I'm talking to can't tell I'm on a cell phone) - but I'm very happy with the price.
And as for microwaving your brain, the analog phones put out a lot more power than than the digital ones - but the figures for american phones are like 600mW and 200mW (analog and digital) compared to the 1000KW a typical microwave oven will output (sucking about 1.5KW of electricity to do it) - hardly a reasonable comparison.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
How can I moderate this frontpage news item as (-5 Moronic Troll)?
I mean, part of the informations are just false, the opinions are presented as facts, and the important factors that caused the switch to digital cell phones are conveniently avoided.
(like the max number of users per cell, min and max cell sizes, signal degradation in transit and several more)
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
and here - for a CDMA FAQ
and here for why CDMA is better than analog along with a whole lot of other shit as to why dropped calls are far less frequent on digital networks as opposed to analog ones...
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
My Verizon Wireless phone only gets an analog signal in Orlando. Heck it also only gets analog in Peoria (next to the Verizon building) and in Canada. In analog mode most conversations are unintelligible, calls frequently fail to complete and the battery gives me a whopping talk time of 12 minutes. (It also gets so hot it almost burns.)
Analog phones are typically 1.5-5 watt transmitters, digital phones run anywhere from .6-1.5 watts. So the egg frying is actually worse on analog (Both penetrate your skull pretty easily) So if you want range or your provider has long distances betwwen towers, analog is the way to go. But if you want features beyond basic voice mail, time to move to digital.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
On last thing, the digital system works on 1.9GHz... your home microwave works on 2.4GHz.. It's close enough, you still want to hold that phone next to your head? Remeber what happens to an egg when you put it in the microwave, and then decide.
Dude, why don't you also look at POWER LEVEL involved in these two operations. Your "egg" trick probably runs 600-1100 W depending on how old your microwave is.
There are virtually NO frequency resonant effects from RF up until about 5 GHz (debatable) or 18 GHz (electron spin). It's POWER not FREQUENCY that makes the heating.
Many responders observe that the 600 mW of a phone
is about 1e-3 or less of the power of an oven, but
neglect to consider that you don't hold an oven
against your skull (hopefully). Holding a cell
at 600mW 5mm from your skull is like holding an
oven magnetron 6 inches from your skull, in terms
of the power density over the surface area at the
nearest point. I don't do either. I use a headset.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
- Statements about signal penetration indicate some knowledge of RF Engineering. Has the author ever worked in Radio Frequency engineering?
- Statements of coverage area indicate a knowledge of how the wireless companies have deployed sites. Which carriers have shared this information with the author?
- Is there any evidence that isn't anecdotal in the author's statements?
Since no credentials are given for the author, I am quite curious to see if this is an amateur opinion or an educated one. Being a technical field, only the latter matters.There are a lot of things to dislike about wireless companies - the weak regulatory bodies that have failed to force standardization or universal coverage, or the amount the industry is steered by market analysts with no experience or knowledge of the field both spring to mind. But the adoption of digital technologies is not one of them.
--Gus
True there is more cell phone coverage in Europe than in the US. However the US has a lot less people. There are places where there is still NO coverage, no analog, no digital, not even a a smile land line phone for miles. However if people actually live in the area there is some form of coverage. True it may be analog in some areas, but there is cell phones and land lines to nearly everyone.
It shows that you have not been to North america lately. I have cell coverage until I really get out there. I get it when camping on an island. Sure I eventially get out of my digital only coverage area, but only when traveling well outside of the areas I normally travel. Most months I do not go out of my coverage area, and often when I do I get coverage back again at my destination.
P.S. I have a GSM cell phone however that means nothing to me. It is just an engineering protocol, and I frankly don't care what protocol my phone uses, I care that my phone works, and it does.
Just when I thought last night's CD player Ask Slashdot was the worst ever.
Thank you, sir, for proving the bar can indeed be set lower.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The signal in an analog phone is still converted into digital pulses at some point along its journey. There's no escaping it. You're either woefully uninformed, or just a really bad troll.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
My repsonse to this is so what? I don't need to stream lossless audio down my cell phone. I want the person on the other end to hear me somewhat clear. If they tune the codec to human voice, around the 150 KHZ range, that's fine.
You know who I think is crazy? All my ex-girlfriends!
I've been using various digital cellphones lately, from an LG-T520 to an Audiobox 9000 or something (stupid loaner phone while I'm getting some repairs done to my LG), and here's my refutations of what's the dilly, yo:
However, with a digital system when the signal fades, there's no yelling because the signal isn't there, and packets that should be getting to your phone, just get dropped. As a result, Aunt Martha's 'Hello' on a crummy analog connection can still be made out.. but on a digital connection of the same strength might sound like 'He...o' with a gap of silence in the middle.
Even with the worst digital signal I could find, I've never had a problem at all hearing someone else's voice. I've been told that some voicemail I left once dropped out a word, but that's the only comment I've ever had. Other than that, no problems.
he question now becomes, why are they moving to 1.9GHz?
Among the other reasons mentioned, it provides more bandwidth as well, which means a lot of things - more users, more data, more whatever you're sending.
However, the cell phone companies need to cover the area better for there to be as much coverage, especially in the city where there is lots of Multi-path (bounces and signal inversions), and buildings to go through.
I live in Fredericton, NB. We have digital, but barely, since the telco just decided fairly recently to cover the area with digital. There isn't great digital coverage, but see my comment above for the impact this has made. The worst problem I've had is that I get bumped to analog (usually four or five out of six bars) when I'm in a basement room two minutes' walk from daylight, or I get no signal whatsoever, in worse circumstances. Even if digital coverage were hopeless, my phone can not only fall back to Analog from digital, it can do so in the middle of a call. It can't fall forward to digital during a call, but that's ok.
In addition, back to Aunt Martha, as long as her 'Hello' usually sounds like her 'Hello' on a land line, what difference does it make right? Well, unfortunately, the digital standards we have today are from years past. And while they work, they are by no means clear. If you are looking for clarity, you'll want to stick with an analog phone.
I don't know about you, but my phone uses 3G CDMA (hooray Qualcomm), which is a fairly new standard, and most people (even people who KNOW that my only phone is a cellphone) often ask whose house I'm at - because I sound like I'm on a land line, and everyone knows cellphones are horrible, right?
Another related comment: I was standing in Starbucks, of all places, surrounded by a crowd and with the espresso machine going, while I was on my cellphone, but the person on the other end could only hear me. When I wasn't talking, there was no sound. When I was, there was only me. Hooray active noise reduction. That being said, it was the phone itself doing it, and not CDMA's built-in anti-background filter (though that can't have hurt).
The compression algorithms used are lossy; they're specifically designed around transmission of human voice to human ears, and take advantage of what the human ear will tolerate and what it won't.
Don't forget to mention that, in the case of CDMA, it just doesn't transmit while you're talking, and doesn't recieve when the other person isn't. This saves battery power, bandwidth, radiation, everything. Analog, on the other hand, is always doing what it's doing all the time, by nature of it being a connection, as opposed to packets.
What about the pros for digital? Digital is a bit more secure then analog as you can't hear it just by setting a scanner to the correct frequency, you also have to un-encode it from the digital, and smooth the signal out.
Not to mention battery life. I can go for literally a week and a half without charging my phone, as long as I'm not stuck in that stupid room in the forestry building I had class in last semester. When I am, and I get bumped to analog, my battery drains almost 80% in a day. This is partly because I get poor reception, but even in one-bar digital areas, I don't have any sorts of issues (and I should know, Chapters/Starbucks is one such area).
On last thing, the digital system works on 1.9GHz... your home microwave works on 2.4GHz.. It's close enough, you still want to hold that phone next to your head? Remeber what happens to an egg when you put it in the microwave, and then decide.
Oh yeah, and by the way, wireless networking is going to give you testicular cancer, because it uses 2.4 GHz, just like your home microwave. And it'll fry your brain! And eat your fish! And salt your lawn! Fearmongering is pathetic, let's get real.
I use and like my 3G CDMA LG T520, serviced by Telus Communications, 800 MHz digital network by Aliant Telecom. Rare dropped packets, rare analog service, even though there are very few towers around here, and yet the data service is entirely reliable. They're putting up a 1900 MHz digital tower soon, which will provide us with '1x service' (the full 3G shebang), but in the meantime, my phone rocks anyway, and will gladly switch from 1900 MHz digital to 800 MHz digital to analog depending on what it can find.
So why is there such a complaint? Are people getting stuck with digital-only phones? Do Americans have to make this choice actively when they get a cellphone? Every phone Telus sells is 3G CDMA, tri-mode, and cool to boot. No old-school audiobox, no Nokia phones, just good-looking, good-working, sturdy, quality phones, and you know what? They work great, even here.
--Dan
Nice FUD article.
- a.c.
When reading this take into account I'm replying to the euros that have a "it's better in europe" argument, many european friends I have here do not posess such an arrogant attitude.
To the euros who say, why is it the US does X different, I would reply because we can.
You have no choice, GSM is what you will eat, you will eat it long after it's been a cutting edge standard and you will wonder why you are stuck with an aging standard in a world that is spinning faster and faster by the day.
Now for the euros you get screwed everytime you pick the phone up with metering, so I could see how inane text messageing would be the way to go, but personally when I think of cell phone I think of phone, not device with sucky ergonomics to type messages in.
Corporations aren't in the habit of forking over money whenever the users get a tingle they need X feature. Show them the money and they will show you the features. That said I have not met but a very few people on this side that use anything other than voicemail on their cell phones. Everything else is a toy to the majority of users. I'm not lumping slashdot readers in with the general populace, but for Joe sixpack it is true.
And as for the phones.....
Analog sucked period, the smallest phone I could get in '94 felt as if it were going to catch fire on long conversations. I personally like the Qualcomm standard (CDMA I think)used in the old PrimeCo phones, I hardly ever had a breakup in my area, coverage at the time wasn't great, but for most of my uses it had crystal clear reception. All of the other providers ATT, TMobile (in particular) and Cingular(better than the rest, but below primeco) had less than stellar performance (I'm not sure what standard they used)
I just drove 2000 mile across the country, I have free roaming and nationwide long distance. So I'd say I have no problems with my phone, it does what it should and I see no reason why we should conform just to be like the rest of the world, what for a few inconvienced international travelers? If you have the money to come here you have the cash to buy a cheap prepaid cell phone in 711 or radioshack, that's what I would do if I traveled to europe.
Damn now you'll be bitching about how Japan and the US use lower voltages than europe and different plugs too, it's a bitch ain't it? If I cared about karma I'd run for office.
juggling between digital and analog mode, as most do, is very costly
Try a stinking dual-band phone.
We have GSM already.
We also have CDMA.
We also have AMPS.
We also have CDPD.
Radio anyone?
Choose OTA, XM, or Sirius
TV?
OTA, Cable, DirecTV, Echostar (Dish)
Internet?
Dial-Up (gobs of providers), DSL, IDSN, Satellite, Radio (802.11), Ricochet, Wireless (2.5G), Cable
Phone?
In my area, Qwest, McLeodUSA, or TelcomStar
Wireless?
In my area:
AT&T, Sprint, Verizion, T-Mobile, Cingular, Nextel, Cricket, Qwest, more
See a trend?
I'm amazed there are still countries that have analog cell phone networks at all. I never had the opportunity to buy one -- ave to actually using it. Is this a third world country we're talking about?
--
I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it
1.9Ghz and 2.4Ghz. Close? 500 cycles per second. 25%. But then again 2+2=5 for very large values of 2...
Why bother with the theory anyway? If you're worried, put your egg by your phone and cook it.
In Europe, I can leave the UK and travel to damn near any other European country, and use the same phone. If you want to phone me, in Romania, dial the international dialling code for Romania then my mobile number.
Wrong. If you have a UK phone, and travel abroad, callers still dial your UK number (ie. the UK country code). They don't have to take account of what country you are in (and frequently will not even know!).
I believe the US use 1900MHz because they are in ITU region 1, and 1800MHz over there is assigned to something else (Europe is ITU region 2). Tri-band phones are so common now that the exact frequencies used are pretty irrelevant (1800 and 1900Mhz signals having roughly the same properties).
It would be useful for the US to be completly GSM based, as then everyone can move back and forth more easily. I see GSM a bit like the PC standard - it may not be the best system possible, but by been so common the hardware/software costs are very low. However, the US is a large enough market to support it's own standards and realise economy of scale (although having 4 standards is perhaps going a bit far!)
Wrong. If you have a UK phone, and travel abroad, callers still dial your UK number (ie. the UK country code). They don't have to take account of what country you are in (and frequently will not even know!).
Cool. Might just be Orange, then. Or possibly they've changed it recently.
...the analog networks have totally disappeared. The 3 cell providers here (Optus, Telstra and Vodafone) have ceased all anolog service. You can't buy an analog phone here. I assumed it was the same in the US. The only place there is an anolog service of some sort is in the outback (but that barely exists).
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
Cool. Might just be Orange, then. Or possibly they've changed it recently.
No you have always only had one phone number, not one for each country with a Orange GSM roaming agreement. The system would not work otherwise and people would have to no where you are, which is so impractical to organise its impossible. You will have one phone number and it will be +447XXX XXXXXX just the same as all other mobile users in the UK.
I have roamed with Orange since 1999 and this as far as I am concerned is always the way it has been.
If you read a speed reading book, does it take you less time to read the second half?
I'm from Europe and here it is all digital!!!
the digital system works on 1.9GHz... your home microwave works on 2.4GHz.. It's close enough, you still want to hold that phone next to your head?
You have a 850W mobile phone!? This is just a pile of FUD. The 900MHz analogue signals are at a higher power than digital, and since they're at a lower frequency will penetrate further into the skull.
Don't correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the NMT 450MHz is still alive in some countries:
Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria, Russia, Ukarine.
How do you get this kind of opnionated crap as a slashdot article? I mean, he's sure entitled to his opnion, but he doesn't provide much references or credientals... So it's just a blurt of opinion. Why Slashdot front page?
analog made sense when voice/speech was the primary "application" of wireless communication. but as you might have seen over the last few years, there are so many "non-speech" based applications. This migration path from primarily speech to a scenario where speech and data(for services) are not distinguished, requires digital technology (GSM/CDMA evolving towards CDMA2000/UMTS). so, i wonder if you would continue using the analog phones if offered the gamut of services possible with digital phones.
Using Cingular, my analog service was far superior to digital. With digital, I had to constantly move around my apartment to keep a conversation going. Sometimes I'd not even get a ring - I'd move the phone and "1 missed call, you have voicemail" would appear on-screen - yet the phone was within reach all evening, ringer on Loud.
It was enough to make me drop service althogether. I don't think I'll go back to Cingular when I'm ready to try a cell phone again - but that will be a long time.
No, there are still analog cell sites in the US. I can drive up in the mountains of North Carolina and all I get is analog service.
True there is more cell phone coverage in Europe than in the US. However the US has a lot less people.
Hmmm, I guess this is is straying off-topic but I have to correct you on that. The population of the European Union right now is roughly 280 million. This will rise to around 360 million once the new members (mostly former Eastern Bloc states) join.
Compare that to the US population of roughly 300 million. Hardly "a lot less people" is it?
True, Europe is more densely populated than the US but most as Americans live in urban areas (cities, towns) it doesn't make that much difference.
Sure, if you live in a remote area of Utah then you're not going to find network coverage everywhere but the same is true of some places in Europe. However, it is fair to say that the percentage of land where you can't find coverage is far greater for the US than it is for the majority of Europe.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Err, I hate to rain on your parade but you can walk into any phone store in Europe and buy a tri-band phone on a choice of networks that will work virtually anywhere in the world (including the US).
And as for radio, internet, and other telephone, the choices are just as varied as those you've oulined - those services and services and technologies do exist outside of the US and have done for some time.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
So many things are misinformed/wrong about this...
Most have been posted by others, such as:
a) Digital can be in the 800 MHz band (same as analog) in addition to 1.9 GHz, and most of Verizon's CDMA network is low-band. 1.9 GHz is used because we ran out of 800 MHz spectrum.
b) Analog typically takes 3x as much power. Digital is good for the handset battery and good for your head. Digital phones peak at 200 mW, analogs are 600 mW for handsets, and some portables are 3W units. Analog is actually better for the provider power consumption wise - Analog FM signals can be amplified with around 70-80% efficiency or more, as opposed to around 14% for the absolute latest CDMA amplifiers. (FM signals do not need a linear amplifier, while CDMA requires an ultra-linear amplifier.)
c) RF cannot directly harm your body. (i.e. changing DNA nucleotides) The only way RF can harm your body is by heating it. Who cares if 1.9 GHz is close to 2.4 GHz? It's 200 milliwatts, which will cause negligible heating even if it is more efficiently absorbed than 800 MHz radiation. If RF were that dangerous, half of my coworkers would be dead after 10+ years of developing microwave transmitters and amplifiers. Yes, you have to be careful, and 45W of microwave directly into your body can do serious damage, but 200 milliwatts can't do diddly, even if you directly touch the antenna.
d) The author is severely wrong about quality vs. signal strength with analog vs. digital. Even at 4 bars of signal, an analog signal will have static. At 1-2, it will be almost unintelligible. I can get crystal-clear connections at 1 bar of signal, sometimes even 0 (i.e. on the verge of losing a connection) with my CDMA phone.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Now for the euros you get screwed everytime you pick the phone up with metering, so I could see how inane text messageing would be the way to go, but personally when I think of cell phone I think of phone, not device with sucky ergonomics to type messages in.
Can someone please tell me what people find so objectionable to the idea that the caller party pays (CPP)? If I want to send someone a letter then I have to pay for the service - the paper, the envelope and, most importantly, the stamp. And, in just about every market outside of North America, the same model is applied to telephone calls.
Frankly this makes far more sense than the US model - if you want to talk to me then why should I have to pay for the priviledge of having to hear what you have to say? And how would you feel if the mail worked that way too? Can you imagine having to pay the postal service for receiving bills or junk mail?
Now, if you make lots of calls you pay more than someone who makes only a few. This makes sense - the more you use a service, the more you pay for it.
Heavy users can plan accordingly, by subscribing to a plan that has a lot of inclusive minutes and/or for which the call costs are greatly reduced (eg, a few US cents per minute).
Meanwhile, light users aren't penalised into contracts that require them to shell out big bucks for a service they don't use. Sure, they pay more for their calls, but the rates aren't that much more than those of public phones.
So in Europe, a business man who uses his phone constantly can pay a fixed monthly fee and use his phone as much as he likes whilst, on the same network, a frail grandmother who only has a phone for emergencies can go months without having to pay a single penny for the peace of mind that having a phone gives her.
How is this a bad thing?
Roaming costs? What roaming costs? It's just not an issue in Europe. Nationwide long distance? I pay one rate for all calls, irrespective of who I call or where they are.
Again, not a bad thing.
Sometimes, when things are different, it's because they are different for a very good reason.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
You have no choice, GSM is what you will eat, you will eat it long after it's been a cutting edge standard and you will wonder why you are stuck with an aging standard in a world that is spinning faster and faster by the day
Huh ? Most networks in europe are already 2.5G (as in GPRS) and have already got themselves some very expensive lisences for 3rd generation frequencies etc which I guess they will want to use ASAP.
but personally when I think of cell phone I think of phone, not device with sucky ergonomics to type messages in.
Obviously, you have not witnessed a 14 year old kid text message his friends. It's almost like your parents watching you type on a keyboard: they might think it's awkward and slow, but to you it feels natural.
Also, predictive text input like T9 can make your life a lot easier if your spelling is good: instead of pressing each button a number of times depending on which letter you want to get (2 for a, 22 for b, 222 for c...) you press the button just once. The phone then displays the most likely word that can be typed with those keys, updating its guess with each keypress. You can also cycle through the other maches.
A bit of true and error.
Yes, there are no analog networks alive in europe, AFAIK (at least in spain).
At least for me, using one of the spanish operators when I traveled around europe the people who called me called me to my original number as if I were in spain. The reason is that they pay the call as if I were in spain as they have no reason to know I'm abroad, but then I had to pay the call from spain to the country I was speaking.
Roaming really works great, and with Euro traveling has become a great pleasure.
Do you still have caller ID when you roam?
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
Hey, without digital phones you can't get adult material on your phone! With the new color screens and faster data rates, you're really missing out with an analog phone. ;)
Anyway, as many people have pointed out this topic is way behind the times on frequencies (and those can change anyway) and mostly skews the facts. Getting a good digital phone (and an antenna network as dense as the analog one you're comparing to) will eliminate the advantages of analog.
Also note that 2.4GHz corless phones were supposed to have better range and quality than the 900MHz ones, but that's not mentioned. Due to the complete lack of any modern details, I think this article was written a few years ago when digital was still brand new. Otherwise the author is simply a few years behind the times.
US mobile phone networks seem really limited - if you go outside a given area, you might have coverage, but it's more likely you'll have to pay a fortune for it.
That's been true in the past, but it's changing quickly. I pay $99/month and get unlimited minutes, unlimited roaming, and free long distance.
Try that in Europe, chump.
I am by no means bashing the euro way of doing things, I'm just tired of very closed minded people saying get with the program.
What program?
It all works well here, Contrary to what some euros believe, just because some Americans get pissy about not being catered to doesn't mean it doesn't work. If there is a demand here it will be filled.
I have so many minutes I never use them all, I would have to be on the phone for an excessive amount of time to come close.
I don't feel I pay too much for what I get out of it, nothing is free, and I appreciate someone being able to call me from a landline w/o a charge.
I bear the burden, I gave them my number and that likely means I wish to talk to them again, but if not caller id solves that quickly.
There is etiquett involved while speaking to an American on a cell phone, you should ask if they wish the conversation to be continued on a landline, with you calling them back on that landline if they desire. I personally am a just the facts type person on the phone(usually due to driving), unless I'm home, then I have that landline. I like my nice big phone for long conversations, or the planetronics handsfree (I have one for the cellpone, but I like the landline one better.
Now as far as the text messaging goes, I know 14 year olds can use it effectivly, but it's a limitation forced on people due to the form factor of the phone. I played around with it in the office for awhile and did sorta get the hang of it, and never used it again, it's just too easy to dial the number. Sorry, but with the price of cheap laptops and PDAs it's hard to see the point.
I'd say the only problem I've had with the cell phone companies are the lack of informed individuals when you call them.
And thats a really good thing as analog signals take up way too much airspace compared to digital ones...
One thign to note, at least with vodaphone, you pay extra to phone from abroad (signal goes from greece to UK, via many carriers, therefore costs more). In addition, if you phone someone in greece from greece, you pay the cost to UK, and then cost to greece. Finally if someone phones you from UK to your number (07890123456), you pay the UK-Greece cost (as charging the UK person for an international call when they dialed a normal 07, without telling them, is bad)
That was with Vodaphone xnet200. Same sort of thing with orange too (last summer any way).
I ran up a £120 bill over summer, thanks to 3 weeks in greece, then 2 weeks driving back through europe, and calling my parents (who live in greece). Didnt use any free minutes either!
Roaming really works great, and with Euro traveling has become a great pleasure.
Agreed. It's as useful as a single currency - I still havent worked out some Italian phone cards (where you have to dial a number)
I've had a mobile for the last 5 years (of course now every 12 year old and his dog had one, I was the only person in school with a phone on GCSE results day). Naturally I dont remember peoples phone numbers now.
This was a great problem when I left my phone in greece 2 weeks ago. Got on the boat to italy, and realised I'd forgotten it when I tried to look at the time (I dont have a watch now either).
Didnt know anyones number, and after a 24 hours boat ride, spending 6 hours in venice on new years eve, isn't fun. Found an internet cafe, and sent a few emails. Couldnt make any phone calls though because I didnt know anyones number! Eventually got back to the UK and rang directory enquiries from Bristol.
A phone is great, but dont rely on it!
Free calls while roaming? Not bad if you compare the u.s. to europe. Compare U.S. to a single country in europe and thats hardly something to be impressed with.
For about £65($100) a month I can get about 600 minutes of free calls across the UK, to mobiles or land lines, 24 hours a day. Tons of free texts too, about £250 off a phone (e.g. nokia 7650 for free) on a 12 month contract.
OK, who is that with? I'd like to get that next time I'm over.
I'm not really sure what my phone tarriff is at the moment. I do know I get 50 minutes free in the evenings, but I use my phone quite a bit during the day. My monthly bill is about £20, anyway.
To the euros who say...
Talking money? Wow, I have to get me some of those.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Just for quick reference, I did some back-of-the-envelope calcs. The sum area of UK, ES, PT, FR, DE, BE, NE, IT, IE, CH, AT, DK, NO, SE, and FI is 3469046 km^2, while the US (excluding Alaska, which would badly skew things) is 7928957. (I should have thrown in Greece, too, along with the little countries, but it's not going to make that much difference, and I intentionally excluded the former Iron Curtain areas.)
So for the same monthly price, he gets unlimited talk time from anywhere on the network to anywhere at all in the US. Not bad.
This isn't a reply to you, but to some other stuff I saw:
For the Europeans who decry our "cell phone user always pays" policy, yes, it was a substantial impediment to early adoption. As national networks have been built (one of the good outcomes of the telecom deregulation), prices have dropped precipitously.
I pay $35 (after all taxes and fees) for 300 anytime minutes from anywhere on Sprint's network to any US phone number, and I have unlimited nights and weekends (9 pm to 7 am). Free phone, 1 year contract. For ~$90/mo I could have gotten two phones, two phone numbers, unlimited free minutes to any other Sprint PCS customer, and 2000 minutes shared between the two phones. So yeah, it still sucks here if you're a VERY low usage customer - I think you can't get a plan at all under about $10/mo - but all companies are required to carry 911 (emergency) calls, so you can just get someone's old phone and use it to call in case police/ambulance are needed.
Oh, and a question I've always wanted to ask a GSM fan: isn't the price so hellish when traveling abroad with your phone that you're probably better off just getting a prepaid for $50 or so? (Or can you just get a prepaid SIM and drop it in your phone? That would be pretty cool.)
Seriously, guys, get with the rest of the world.
Okay, you've never travelled in North America, have you. You really don't understand how far people are apart here. You need population density to make these kinds of networks worthwhile, or they aren't economically feasible. Simply put, analog towers service fewer simultaneous users, but cover a much larger range. Therefore, if you have lower population density, analog suits you better.
To illustrate population density differences, check out the CIA world factbook, and divide the population of the U.S. by the area, then do the same with some European countries.
U.S.: 30 people per km^2
Romania: 97 people per km^2
France: 110 people per km^2
Germany: 238 people per km^2
U.K.: 248 people per km^2
You see, the U.S. can't offer digital service to it's entire population unless the entire population lives in urban areas.
Compare that to where I'm from - Canada, at 3.5 people per km^2. However, Canadians tend to be urban dwellers, with around 80% living in cities in the more moderate climates, so our cell phone coverage is similar to the U.S., with digital coverage to most people, but analog coverage to the rest of the populated areas.
It's similar to the automobile phenomenon... I've heard many Europeans can't believe how many cars we own in North America, but again due to population density, public transportation just won't take you where you want to go. The country is huge. If we wanted to do a "road trip" to visit relatives on the east coast, that would be a 25 hour drive, and I live near Toronto! Visiting my relatives in Vancouver would be a 40 hour drive! Of course, I'd probably fly...
So anyway, I guess size does matter.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
The average population density in Scotland is 60 people/sq. km. so it's more or less the same. England has a very high population density, so that pulls the UK average up. However, Scotland also has rather better mobile phone coverage than England (except for T-Mobile, which sucks everywhere outside London and Glasgow). Even the areas of the Scottish Highlands, where the population density is 8/sq.km., has excellent mobile coverage.
I pay $35 (after all taxes and fees) for 300 anytime minutes from anywhere on Sprint's network to any US phone number, and I have unlimited nights and weekends (9 pm to 7 am). Free phone, 1 year contract. For ~$90/mo I could have gotten two phones, two phone numbers, unlimited free minutes to any other Sprint PCS customer, and 2000 minutes shared between the two phones. So yeah, it still sucks here if you're a VERY low usage customer - I think you can't get a plan at all under about $10/mo - but all companies are required to carry 911 (emergency) calls, so you can just get someone's old phone and use it to call in case police/ambulance are needed.
Dont you have pay as you go (pre paid) plans?
Oh, and a question I've always wanted to ask a GSM fan: isn't the price so hellish when traveling abroad with your phone
It's not great - about 5 times land line call charges IIRC.
that you're probably better off just getting a prepaid for $50 or so?
Potentially, but only if you phone the country you are in a LOT while you are there. e.g. I go to greece, with a UK phone, I pay Greece - UK charges, plus UK - Greece charges if I phone someone in greece while I'm over there.
(Or can you just get a prepaid SIM and drop it in your phone? That would be pretty cool.)
Yes you can. in the UK they are about £5 - as least last time I saw them. In fact, my parents came over to the UK at the start of december, with their Greek mobile. I gave them an old sim card of mine that I had converted to pay as you go at the end of my contract (planned on selling the phone, but then I lost the charger). It had £5 credit on it, and they dropped it into their phone no problem (until the battery ran out 8 days later - they didnt bring their charger as they didnt think they'd need it)
Unfortunatly some phones are "locked" to a particular network (to stop selling subsidised phones to China et. al.). You can get them unlocked for about £20 though.
However even after a month and a half in europe, phoning greece on my mobile from UK, and from EU countries, the total bill came to £60 in calls (and £60 for 2 months line rental).
The sum area of UK, ES, PT, FR, DE, BE, NE, IT, IE, CH, AT, DK, NO, SE, and FI
For reference, the EU now is
UK IE PT ES FR DE BE NE LUX IT AT DK SE FI GR. Not CH, NO
Total area: about 2,800,000km ^2
New members next year will be (assuming they all vote yes in their own elections
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovinia, Malta, Cyprus (propper cyprus, not the turkish occupiers of the north)
Total area: 735,000km^2
Total area of new EU: 3,500,000 km^2
In addition, Bulgaria and Romania are likely to join in 2007. Turkey want to be, but EU doesnt like it, partly because of their land border with Iraq.
Also most non-EU countries part of Europe are covered by the same phone system (as is most of the world), but can be listed here
Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegvina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Channel Islands, Turkish occupied area of Cyprus, Iceland, Isle of Man, Litchenstein, Monaco, Norway, Romania, San Marino, Switzerland, European part of Turkey, Ukraine, Vatican City, Yugoslavia
Total area: 1,900,000km^2
Total land size of europe (bordered by mid-atlantic ridge, Mederterranian sea, Russia, Black Sea and sea of MaMara): 5,400,000 km^2
Total area U.S.A: 9,600,000km^2 (9,000,000 without Alaska)
Total area Russia: 17,000,000km^2 (larger then Europe and U.S.A combined!)
Err, I hate to rain on your parade but you can walk into any phone store in Europe and buy a tri-band phone on a choice of networks that will work virtually anywhere in the world (including the US).
Um, I hate to rain on your parade but I can do the same thing in the US. My tri-band (800 analog, 900/1900 GSM) phone works just fine in Europe.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Dont you have pay as you go (pre paid) plans?
Yes. I have AT&T prepaid cell phone that I pay $0.10/minute. As long as I keep adding funds to the account every 45 days, the time that I've paid for never goes away. I don't have to worry about contracts, credit history, and it is cheaper per month than most wireless plans.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Very true. I found out the hard way just last week that my tri-band Ericsson doesn't work in a lot of Virginia because there's no digital coverage at all there - not just in the middle of the woods, but in large commercial towns like Roanoke City. The population there is around 100,000 (to make that more comprehensible to Brits like me, that's approx. the same size as Chester or Exeter, and 15% or so bigger than Durham or Hartlepool) - but there's only an analogue signal. It's very frustrating - I don't think either digital or analogue is inherently evil, but I'm certainly in favour of everyone being on just one system or the other.
Well sure, but we have the density elsewhere in the country to subsidise that, innit?
dood, that's because the crappy country you live in is majorly small.
We do. My point was, though, that GSM is cheap to roll out even in really sparse areas.
I and several friends have had Sprint phones for several years now and have no complaints with them (other than customer service). I have no land line and my Sprint phone has been my only phone for almost 3 years now.
No complaints with dropped calls, no complaints with bad service areas anywhere near an urban area or the interstate (outside of urban areas is a different story though), and no complaints about using the phone in a house or an apartment complex.
Oh and in the last 3 years I've lived in New Orleans (LA), Baton Rouge (LA), North Louisiana, and am currently living in Little Rock (AR).
Here in Arkansas, I frequently go backpacking and rock climbing and hardly ever have a problem getting a digital signal when on top of a mountain even if its miles away from a large town/interstate/mmajor highway.
But I can see how a particular cell phone companies service could suffer in a much more densly populated area.
Still, that'll be a nice little datum for the history students a century from now, except that Alaska is ~600,000 square miles, not square km. It's too bad it's not in the CIA factbook; I'd trust that a lot more than anything else I'd get for free online.
On a Verizon Wireless phone, if you dial *228, then wait for the prompt, choose "upgrade your roaming capabilities". And it's even a free call. My phone used to have the same problems, but not after the upgrade.
It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
I can roam almost anywhere (and without extra charges) in the US with my cell phone, which is a land mass much larger than Europe. I have experienced this kind of connectivity on Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and Nextel. I used Voicestream (1.9Ghz GSM) for ~ 1 year as well. Great service when I had a signal. Unfortunately, the higher frequency signals really created gaps in coverage. What do we give up with CDMA? For now some of the more advanced data functions, but that will change soon. Bottom line is, I need a phone primarily for voice calls - give me good coverage first, bells and whistles second.
Absolutely wrong. Roanoke is covered by Nextel Partners, which is all digital. The key to your statement was that YOUR digital phone couldn't get a signal.
Come play Moral Decay!
Looking at the Nextel coverage map, I see you're right; but the family I was staying with had an analogue phone, and that worked, while my tri-band digital phone couldn't find a network on any frequency. Can you tell me more? I'm curious now.
The majority of slash-dotters probably reside in urban or suburban areas (as do I) but analog can come in very handy in emergency situations out in the hinterlands. About a month ago I was up in the mountains outside of Sonora, California on higway 108. My girlfriend and I were about 45 minutes away from the nearest 'civilization' when we spotted a small, but growing, forest fire. We both pulled out our PCS (digital) cell phones -- she has Verizon; I have AT&T. Neither of our phones could muster enough of a signal to call 911. Luckily, I keep an ancient (~1995 vintage) analog motorala bag phone in my trunk for just such emergencies. I pulled it out and, even though I haven't had service active on the phone for the better part of a decade, I was able to plug it into my cigarette lighter and call 911. I was expecting a poor signal, if I got a signal at all, but the signal was crystal clear. This is at least partially due to the higher wattage (5w?) of the old phone when compared to the newer PCS phones (1w?).
In any case, an 8 year old bag phone may have saved a few dozen acres of remote mountain foliage, but more importantly, it may save my tutkus some day. Chalk another one up for analog -- higher maximum wattage and larger legacy coverage area.
The sig is only in your mind.
In addition to selling you new equipment (and new contracts), the real reason behind the move to digital is that it allows the providers to cram more calls in during peak hours. They can packet-rob or bit-rob your signal (degrade quality) to provide more calling channels. They can fill gaps in your conversation with other conversations, etc.
That's probably because his triband phone uses an international standard, whereas the US in it's wisdom decided to have multiple incompatible standards.
Simply put, analog towers service fewer simultaneous users, but cover a much larger range. Therefore, if you have lower population density, analog suits you better.
There is no reason why digital cannot service large cells - analogue is not inherently better in this regard.
Or wear an aluminum foil hat!
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
First there was 1G. We of the US decided to have a bunch of different competing standards. Europe decided the same. When it came time to upgrade to 2G, the US kept on keeping on with the competing standards thing. Europe and the rest of the world decided that GSM was the thing for them, so now there is essentially GSM everywhere but the US, and chaos inside the US. 3G will fix all that, but it's going to cost out the ass for the companies to install the equipment necessary, and while being able to take pictures of your balls and message them to other people in the classroom, that doesn't (shouldn't) justify a huge monthly cost. The result is 2.5G which is what we're doing now. All this new stuff uses some of the old equipment and requires some new equipment, most of which will also work with 3G.
In short, analog phones are going to be obsolete before dialup modems are, but if you can find a good deal for a cheap phone with a low monthly rate, swing it. Just don't be angry when you have to buy a whole new 3G handset (or 2.5G for that matter) when the time comes.
You can't reason with them. Europeans hate Americans.
The problem is that they have to put the bells and whistles in in order to attract users and to sell the expensive handsets.
Nextel's network is digital everywhere. We do not do "roaming"... So if our customers have coverage, it is on our own towers and is digital. While this reduced the coverage we could provide early in our comnpanies life, it meant we built out our own coverage and do not rely on other networks. Today we have over 10.5 million customers and our network is excellent.
Come play Moral Decay!